


Gilded

by KaerMorons



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dishonored Big Bang 2017, F/F, High Chaos, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 02:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11636709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaerMorons/pseuds/KaerMorons
Summary: The Empire stops referring to her as the Child Empress only after she takes her fate into her own hands.  Despite coming to power as well as growing up in a city barely held together, facing political intrigue and personal crisis, Emily Kaldwin intends to continue doing just that.  A look at a bleaker world where Corvo chooses a higher end of chaos.





	1. I. The Crow

Even when Corvo began to find his voice again, neither of them wanted to bring the events after her mother’s death quite into focus. 

She could see on Corvo’s face that recalling Jessamine was no longer the sharp, visceral tangle of emotions it had been in their shared time at the Hound Pits. Now, it was something blurred, but still aching, safe so long as he kept it tucked far away. 

Emily was beginning to think that Corvo still saw her as the child that the Loyalists had claimed to protect, innocent and only just oblivious enough to keep her safe. Most of the time, he hardly acknowledged what she knew to be true. She saw more than she told, and he could never stop the court’s whisperings - stories were often exchanged at the time of her coronation about the victims of the Masked Felon alongside those few that he spared, and always with the implication that the reason another Kaldwin sat on the throne was tangled up with him. She remembered every moment she lived out while he was in Coldridge and a part of the Loyalists in vivid, awful detail, no matter how much he wanted her to forget it. Heights still made her stomach turn, and now even the Empress was unsettled by large storms. 

It was strange between them now. With all hope of facade gone with Jessamine, she had hoped that they wouldn’t fall back into the too-stiff propriety of an Empress and a Royal Protector. She used to dream about their perfect reunion as family all that time ago, back in the stuffy attic of the Cat. At night, Emily would imagine the moment she would finally find him again over and over, the moment when she would break away from Prudence and the Pendletons at last and find him waiting on a whaling trawl in the Wrenhaven, to take her to one of the secret smugglers’ hideouts that she’d read about in books. And when they came home to the Tower, no one would question that he was anyone but her father, and things would carry on. But when the true moment came, the stranger under the mask was just barely Corvo. The front of her blouse came back stained red from their embrace, and the sound of the awful things he wore like talismans kept sticking to the air around her, like a half-forgotten song. He stayed a stranger for a long while, and all of her fantasies had really only kept her from thinking too deeply about the coming days.

After everything was over, he was still her Corvo, in a sense. His loss for words ceased to unnerve her approximately two hours after she had discovered it at the Hound Pits, so it was something beyond that, something she couldn’t quite place. A part of her didn’t want to. His past had always been shrouded in mystery, and the continuation of that trend to the more recent past would do both of them more good than they would care to admit.

Eventually, she was in Dunwall Tower again, living the life she had longed for; not a failed Empress, but not a prosperous one, caught up in bad memories and the fact that she wasn’t her mother. A part of a larger machine, so to speak, though it seemed that all she had done since she was eleven was sign and seal papers and speak nicely to the right people at the right time. She found new people to trust and new books to read, and if she was lucky she wouldn't have to think about anything that wasn’t directly in front of her. Which, at the moment, was the time she had neatly set aside to take a simple lunchtime meal with her father. Just this once, she would have preferred to think of anything else but the present.

Outside the bay windows of her study, ships bobbed up along the Wrenhaven, the gray of the river matching the hazy winter sky. There had been no snow for a week now, but that was a blessing; even melancholy gray skies were preferable to the heavy snowflakes that fell like ash over the rooftops, mixing with the smog of industry here in the heart of the city. She could see the whale oil factories in the distance. Sometimes, at night, she swore she heard whalesong, pained and distant. Of course, she had thought the same at the Cat, too. Sokolov had said years ago that it was the mark of an unquiet mind. She had laughed at that, young but already cynical. Even she could recognize that. 

As if on command, a whaling ship slid across the water, silent in spite of the whale hung grotesquely above the deck, which sometimes tossed its great head or threw its tail in some last effort to escape. It was no longer a frightening sight, but one she took with great curiosity. It was the wrong season for whales altogether. If there were any, they came from Serkonos or near to the coasts of Pandyssia, where the waters were always warm. It had traveled far to find itself here, struggling under her gaze.

The sound of the heavy oak door opening broke her from her thoughts. Her hand instinctively flew to the concealed dagger at her side. Corvo, if anything, had her trained well, and she relaxed as she saw that it was his face that looked back at her. 

“Father.” She stood up from the desk and made herself smile, even as the greeting felt foreign and bitter in her mouth. The unpleasant memory of her mother scolding her for using that word in association with Corvo a hundred years ago came rushing back with every intonation. She had forced the title to die in her throat for years, and now she used it freely with a person she could hardly say she knew anymore.

That was too harsh. She owed Corvo more than she could ever say, though a quiet voice in her head always insisted that she did so at a dear cost. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” He looked tired that day - but he always did. Years ago his long hair began growing patches of gray, and the crow’s feet around his eyes seemed to grow deeper every time she saw him. 

“Of course not.” She moved from behind her desk to peck him on the cheek, and he returned with a weary smile and a steady hand against her forearm. “I haven’t been sent anything to seal with my regal hand for at least twenty minutes.” 

In actuality, she had an entire stack of documents to review from Spymaster Shaw, and some sort of boat launch speech to ghostwrite, and pages of parliament notes to look through for the sake of keeping some semblance of knowledge about her empire. Of course, three menial tasks were the busiest that she became, which was still an afternoon’s worth of undistracted work. But she had been staring out the window anyway, and she could hardly refuse with him right here in front of her. 

He chuckled at that, not with the expected ease but with a shifting stance closer to awkwardness. “Careful what you wish for, or you’ll have to cancel our plans.”   
They both shifted, failing to see the humor as soon as the joke left his lips. Corvo glanced away out the window, toward the Wrenhaven. She had spent so much time with him as one of his sole companions, but still he twitched under her gaze, caught trapped and suspended motionless. 

It was a long, quiet walk to the dining room.

Someone whose name she didn’t know brought them a hearty soup in the dining room. Emily sat at the head chair, Corvo beside her, while the table meant for twenty or more stretched out in front of them. 

“Have you seen Alexi lately?” Corvo broke the silence with hesitance in his voice, as if he thought interrupting her soup might be a faux pas. “She asked to review security measures with me. Must be lonely.”

“Or she’s already looking to replace you,” Emily added. He laughed at that, a bit more genuinely, before he turned back to his soup. 

The problem arose when they both found that their bowls were empty. She took a deep breath, setting her spoon down with the resolute click of something ending. 

Her father was sitting here, right in front of her, and she couldn’t think of a word to say to him. Her gut twisted at the implication. She spent years pestering him with questions, even when he couldn’t find the words to answer, but now she found him a stranger to her. It was easy to remember when she used to braid his long hair, or when he used to let her ride on his shoulders if her mother wasn’t around. It was more difficult to try to form a relationship with him based on a childhood friendship.

When she looked to him again, she saw his face was darkened, not in anger, but in the apathetic gray that showed through the windows outside. Her heart twisted, almost out of pity, and she made a last effort by reaching out her hand and placing it on top of his. 

“We haven’t sparred in a while. I’d offer to go now, if I didn’t already know that I’d win.”

He looked up, and his smile just barely chased the gray from his face. The old Corvo, the one she had imagined while locked in the attic of the Golden Cat, was there somewhere, far away. With a voice younger than his years, he replied, “You wish.”  
At least when they sparred, she didn’t have to speak to him.


	2. II. The Falcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had loved Alexi then, and a part of her did even now, in that still-childish way

Alexi had always been one of the few people she knew she could trust.

She had come into Emily’s life only a few months after the start of her reign. After half a year of nightmares and nobles with bad intentions and a city burning around her, Alexi became the only person she confided in, with the exception of her father - and it was nice to have someone who would actually answer back, without any of the ridiculous titles that Emily came to hate after only a matter of days on the throne. She liked how sharp she was, and how she always had something to say about stuffy nobles. Alexi liked her because she was good at hide-and-seek and kept lots of books, not because she was the Empress. 

Emily could remember countless moments as she grew up when she found herself questioning Alexi over and over again if she was sure, if she actually wanted to be her friend and come with her on every possible trip and outing and that she wasn’t being coerced into things. Alexi always laughed at the thought, patiently promising over and over again that they were friends because both of them wanted to be, and if they weren’t, who would be left to put everyone in the court in their place? 

Now, they liked one another out of habit, knowing that the dynamic between them was simple in a complicated life. Alexi spent her time somehow a world away in the training yards so close to Dunwall tower, and in busy times like the month leading up to the Fugue, they were lucky to bump shoulders in a hallway somewhere. All the same, Emily would sometimes be lucky enough to catch her at the right time, if only to offer a few moments of closeness and quiet. 

That explained how the Empress had found herself locked in her saferoom, with a captain of the City Watch curled up close beside her. It was the sort of thing that every maid and palace guard would be keen to gossip about, but had become so natural between them that neither thought anything of it.

That wasn’t entirely true. Emily was thinking about Alexi’s hand quite a bit, watching where it resided comfortably on her knee. It was an innocent gesture, but with Alexi’s red hair spilling onto her shoulder and her body tucked close beside her, it felt almost too intimate. Or she was overcomplicating a friendly gesture.

“What are you thinking about?” Alexi asked innocently, turning to look up at her. It seemed as if she never changed, no matter what uniform she wore. She still had the same pattern of freckles over her nose and the same smile in her eyes as she had when they were fourteen and fighting off Regenters, or when they conspired to spill water all over Florence Boyle’s shirtfront, or when they were nineteen and spent the Fugue locked away in the tower, with too many drinks, and a stolen kiss, and -

“Nothing, really.” Emily answered, hoping it came out as smooth as it had in her head.

“You’re lying, obviously.” Evidently, it hadn’t. Alexi shifted off of her to lean her back against the arm of the couch, now fully facing Emily. “Maybe I’m not allowed to be privy to everything in your life, which is fine. But I’m still curious.”

“Do I have to always be pondering something important? Can’t I just think of something else, for once? Something pleasant, like you?”

“Like me?” Alexi laughed. “What about me?”

Emily paused to take her in while she reclined, covered in blankets with her guard down for once. Eventually, she broke the silence with a half-stifled laugh.

“How ridiculous you looked when you threw back that grenade.”

“I looked ridiculous?” Alexi sat straight up, back beside Emily in a moment. “If I remember right, you tore out a piece of the carriage track and started beating someone with it.”

“I had to protect you!”

“They were attacking you!”

They were both laughing suddenly, as if they were those girls again, with their adrenaline still rushing from the closest thing to a battle either of them had ever seen. As soon as they were rushed home, all forces in the Tower were set off to launch a full investigation of the attack, leaving them locked alone in Emily’s barely finished saferoom. They laughed uproariously then, too, scared and confused but somehow victorious. Any thoughts towards the other Regenters or the fact that this might become the symbolic moment historians would forever call the true start of Emily’s reign were lost completely in their shared moment.

She had loved Alexi then, and a part of her did even now, in that still-childish way. But Alexi was loyal to a fault, and the doubt would always linger that blind loyalty and childhood nostalgia was where her care for Emily ended. Over and over again, Emily smothered the urge to say something to her, putting it off until the next time Alexi proved herself willing to take a grenade for her. 

Eventually, as the night wore on, Alexi’s head rested comfortably in Emily’s lap. They were both a tangle of blankets, huddled together against the cold night that insisted on creeping in through the door to the outside. They shared a comfortable silence, which was more than either of them could have asked for. Emily twined her hands in Alexi’s hair, and she was certain that she was half asleep when she spoke up again. 

“The Fugue is only in a few days, isn’t it?” Alexi’s voice was bleary with sleep, and she didn’t open her eyes.

Emily nodded before realizing that she couldn’t see her. “A week and two days. Why?” It only struck Emily after she answered that Alexi must have known exactly when the Fugue was; she would be spending her time organizing patrols up until the beginning of the festivities. 

Even with her eyes closed, the hesitation was obvious on Alexi’s face in the silence that followed. She shifted in such a way that Emily could no longer see her face, perhaps sensing the eyes on her. 

“I… don’t know. I just think about the last one we spent together.” 

Emily’s breath caught in her throat. 

“… You know, the past few years I’ve been your bodyguard during the Feast. I’m there, but it’s different. I miss being your friend.” Another long silence. “That was… It was nice, the last time.”

She made a small sound of agreement, though it felt weak in her throat. “It was. One of the better Feasts, really.” Her answer was somewhat absent-minded as her thoughts turned to the mask Alexi had made for that year, the russet-feathered one that ended in a hooked beak, covering her eyes and nose. Emily couldn’t exactly remember what she had found for herself; something simple, covering the bottom half of her face. It was silly, how easily she concealed her identity. Not that either of them needed masks for very long, considering the amount of time they spent only with one another. She smiled at that, remembering how regal Alexi looked, only to hide away in Emily’s saferoom several hours into the Feast. 

“You wore your hair down then. I don’t think I’ve seen you wear it like that since.” Alexi turned again and sat up, suddenly examining Emily’s quickly failing updo with some concentration.

‘That’s a funny thing to remember,” Emily answered, shifting at the gaze. Quite honestly, she had hoped that somehow she hadn’t remembered that year’s Fugue at all, or was one of those people who refused to talk about it. 

“You have such lovely hair, you shouldn’t tuck it up all the time.” At Emily’s small, nervous laugh, Alexi straightened up insistently. “I mean it! Come on, let’s see it.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re on about this.” All the same, Emily reached back and pulled the few pins out of her hair’s neat twist, shaking her head to let it to fall around her shoulders. “What was so particular about that time that I had my hair like -“

Alexi’s hand was resting against the side of her face in a moment, her fingers just barely tangled in her long, messy hair. “Because, we were just like this,” she answered, her voice hesitant, “When you… I never forgot about when we-“

Emily closed the gap between them without hesitating, and it was as if every doubt she had ever carried was gone in an instant.


	3. III. The Whale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only a dream.

She had a dream that night for the first time in months. 

The first of the dreams - not the silly, confusing ones about missing deadlines or forgetting to wear pants to parliament, but the ones that smelled of seawater and were pierced by whalesong - began at the Hound Pits, all those years ago. Still, the instance stood out crisply in her memory. 

She was walking alone in her room, but when she opened the door, she found that the gazebo that overlooked the Wrenhaven waited outside. But in the dream, the river was replaced by endless expanses of blue and deep purple, and she knew someone was waiting for her in the place where she had last seen her mother. 

Years later, she still couldn’t figure how it was that she decided go step over the edge, when the night air around her and the marble beneath her bare feet felt more real than the waking world did. But she did, small and insignificant against the expanse of what she knew now was the Void, and she walked out to meet the figure that waited where her mother had died. He didn’t stand, like she had; he moved in and out of view, but when she could see him, he floated with the tips of his boots only barely grazing against the ground. 

Far off, in the distance, the whale song grew louder and louder until it was close at hand. She watched as a massive whale, greater than any she had ever seen in her books or on the ships that that passed by the tower on their way to the factories. Emily reached out over the edge of the world to touch it, and as her fingers brushed up against it she half imagined that she felt the bright lightning of whale oil snapping at her fingertips. The figure watched her intently, studying her every move. She felt his gaze on her even when she didn’t look at him or couldn’t quite see him out of the corners of her vision. 

The whale moved on, swimming through the air to somewhere else. She was left alone again with the strange figure in the gazebo. She approached him, overlooking her pounding heartbeat and the memories that came flooding back when she saw the red stain still fresh on the ground. She had to know. 

All she could remember were his eyes, abyssal and terrible and strange like deep water in a storm, or the darkest night on earth. 

And then she woke up with Callista’s hand on her forehead, calming her, saying every sort of soothing thing she could ever want to hear.

The next time, when the dream came again, everything was changed.

Her eyes opened to her empty bedroom. She supposed that Alexi left hours ago, but from the way that the air cracked and vibrated around her, she knew that Alexi had never been here, exactly. She wasn’t sure if anyone had ever been here before.

When she rose from bed and crossed the room, her hand hesitated on the doorhandle. A part of her wanted to return to bed and forget all of this. The handle was warm under her fingertips, as if someone had been there just moments before her. Deep down, she feared what would await her if she didn’t see what she was meant to see here, in this dream. She knew that this was far from a lucid fantasy, knew that she was being watched and guided, meant to understand something.

She pressed her signet ring to the lock and opened the door, out into the dusty hallway that led to the rooftops. Through the cracks in the wood, a dark grey light flickered, illuminating each of the motes of dust that hung suspended in the air. One of her old history books sat opened on a table right in front of the door, the pages turning of their own accord. She shivered when she saw Callista’s handwriting etched in the margins.

The next door should have lead out into the rooftops of Dunwall, where she used to sit and think with her legs dangling over into nothingness and scare her father for no good reason. Instead, it opened to a different place: dark, vast and endless. It smelled of saltwater, and chimed with a strange, faraway song, but it was changed, turned dark and cold. What had once been a expansive blue sky, or perhaps a sea, was replaced by a far-reaching night.

She stepped out, finding herself on an outcropping of some sort of rock. Strange buildings twisted themselves around one another, crumbling into dust. She followed the clear path through the dark shadows, finding herself standing on Clavering Boulevard, if some horrible fate had come to it. Most of what was left was ashes. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. The bitter cold of the stone beneath her bare feet seemed to creep up into her.

A faint sound, that same song that had first greeted her, called out from somewhere near. It was dissonant and discordant, and immediately reminded her of the few times she witnessed Overseers with their music boxes. It was distinct in that it called out rather than pushed away, and she found her feet following it.

It was familiar, she found herself realizing. Sometimes when Corvo would come home to the Hound Pits, the sound hung around him like smoke. When she sat up in his room drawing pictures, she could hear the singing coming from somewhere hidden. 

Her path began to feel familiar as well. The dilapidated building that rose up in front of her looked like the Cat, though the pristine white walls were streaked with the same ash that covered this place, and everything that was once in the garden had perished. One door hung open, swinging on its last remaining hinge. She found herself climbing the spiral staircase, though all the portrait frames hung empty, and every few steps she would have to jump to avoid a missing one. The rooms were empty and foreign, though sometimes the remains of an expensive vase or a velvet fainting couch would remain, placed just perfectly enough to jog her memory.

Before she could think about it, she found herself at the door of the attic room where she had spent so many long days. The door was closed, and a purple light emanated from under the cracks. The singing was louder, the discordant melody pulling at her nerves, and she found her heart pounding in her chest. With a last steadying breath, she threw open the door and stepped inside.

It was a crude table - an altar, draped with a purple cloth, and one of those lanterns she had used to draw by when the moonlight grew too thin. Now, it shone with violet light, illuminating the object that waited patiently for her.

In all of her books, she had seen images of runes several times. They were hard to come by, or at least they were hardly documented in the books allowed into the royal library. Still, she found them, in all her studies of whales. Sailor’s talismans, at first, who carved their power from the bones of the whales. Now, they belonged to the Outsider.

She knew the object when she saw it. She knew that it dealt with everything she had sworn to the Abbey to avoid. She didn’t know how it would feel when she reached out and took it, the way it ceased its song reassuring her that yes, it was right, and she needn’t leave it again if she wanted to. She traced the Mark etched deep into the bone. It was as if her fingers already knew the way the grooves of the pattern would feel. 

The feeling of being watched flooded over her in an instant. Her first instinct was to hold the rune tight against her body as she spun around to face - 

The shadow of the Golden Cat was gone completely, and in its place she found herself standing before a lighthouse that grew grotesquely out of the rock, with the wind whipping and the rain pouring around her, and she was falling suddenly into -

Her feet hit hard onto the marble of the gazebo, a mirror of the first dream all that time ago. Breath heaving, she looked out over where the Wrenhaven would be, and found nothing, searching for an answer in the darkness. She turned again, frantic, and it was her mother’s gaze that she met, her mother, with that shocked, frightened look on her face that Emily could never forget, the moment that she-

“Emily!”

She sat up straight in bed, the sheets tangled around her legs and her heart still pumping hard in her chest. When she reached up a hand to touch her face, her cheeks were wet.

“You were only dreaming,” Alexi’s voice was low as she seemed to materialize back into existence beside her, with tangled hair and sleep in her eyes. Her hands were gentle as she wiped the tears off of Emily’s face and nudged her to lay back down against the pillows. “It was just a dream.” 

Emily shifted against the pillows uncomfortably as Alexi lay back down beside her. “What was I saying, when I woke you up? What was I talking about?”

She could notice Alexi worrying her lip even in the darkness, hesitating to answer. “I… It was hard to say, something about your mother, and something about the outside, and-“

“I’m sorry to have woken you.” Her apology was sincere, easy, and as soon as she shifted to face her, Alexi was pressed close in arm’s reach again. “It was only a dream,” she repeated, feeling Alexi’s breathing slow as she drifted off to sleep.

When she reached a hand underneath her pillow, the rune was there, waiting for her.

But it was only a dream.


	4. IV. The Hound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was something addictive about letting go and forgetting that, despite the unspoken rules of the Fugue, there would be consequences come morning.

“Do you often find yourself unaccompanied with strangers in dark corners of Dunwall Tower, your majesty?” 

The courtier stood draped in shadow, their voice heavy with a sultry tone and at least two kinds of alcohol. Emily’s hand moved instinctively to the pommel of the blade at her hip, but the courier raised up their hand as if to stop her, motioning with a vague gesture. 

“No need for that. Your guardswoman already gave me the once-over.”

“You asked Alexi for permission to approach me?” She stayed her hand, instead pulling the heavy cloak she wore closer around her against the night chill. A fierce wind blew off the river, and it was close to snowing. Emily was freezing behind the cloak and the mask that covered her eyes. It was a play on a birdlike theme, stark white and angular. “How did you know how to find me?”

The courtier stepped forward enough for the moonlight to catch on their features. The mask covering their face was wolfish and hungry, but they pulled it aside in a moment. They were someone she knew that she should have recognized, but years of indifference to the high-class families of Dunwall were beginning to catch up with her. If anything, they were attractive, and the Fugue-induced haze that currently clouded her vision didn’t allow her to notice much else, besides a thin Morley accent.

“The doubles you have scattered around the party are not entirely convincing.” The courtier kept up their approach. It was slow and non-threatening, but an approach all the same. “It was an intelligent move on the part of whoever thought of it. The swan costume is a bit obvious, but even so, it took me some time to get to you.”

“How do you know I’m not one of the doubles?” Emily couldn’t stop the way her fingers worried at the seam of her cloak, curiosity and fear and something else tangling together in her gut. “You haven’t seen my face, and there are a thousand dark-haired girls in Dunwall who would kill for a chance to be here tonight.”

“I don’t need to see your face, Empress. The way you carry yourself is enough.” A smile quirked at the edge of their features. The dimple at their cheek caught Emily’s attention for longer than it should have. “Every step you take betrays you. The duplicates pretend to be an Empress, or what they think one looks like, but you never put on airs like that. You are every inch your father.” 

_And none of my mother,_ Emily finished silently. _I know that already._ In the silence that followed, Emily looked past the glass doors that the courtier had taken out to the balcony. For a moment, she saw a flash of movement, reddish and feathered. Alexi’s distant presence and protection steadied her and brought her back to the conversation at hand.

“By now you could have assassinated me and half the court, but even on the Fugue you asked Alexi for permission to approach me. Why?” 

“Maybe I wanted to make a good impression.” That smile quirked again at their lips, and Emily realized how close they were now. The courtier took Emily’s hand in theirs and brought it to their lips, dipping into a half-curtsy. Informal, but still technically the proper greeting. “It’s Wyman, my lady.”

“Wyman.” She repeated the foreign name, testing it out. It suited them, somehow. Emily knew what was coming - either an invitation to dance or to court one another or to elope to Morely within the hour. The fact that Alexi was so nearby wracked her with some sort of guilt, though she knew that her attentions could hardly stay entirely on her the entire night. “Ask what you came here intending to ask.”

Wyman broke into a full smile at that. “I only meant to ask for a dance. Unless, of course, you think I should be asking for more? This is the Fugue, after all.”

Emily shook her head, having to keep her face from turning completely crimson. “The dance will do.”

They worked together to open the glass atrium doors to the balcony, letting the music float in from downstairs and fill the area. When they rejoined each other, Wyman’s proximity felt safe and warm against the cold of the night. One hand rested in theirs, and Wyman’s other kept a firm, steadying hand just a few inches too low on her waist. Emily allowed herself to be pulled in, practically pressed flush against the stranger. Because of the cold, of course.

The music that made its way from the main ballroom was different than the strict waltzes usually done in Dunwall’s court. Traveling minstrels of some sort were seeking coin and found it here, where they were allowed to play whatever tune struck them in line with the Fugue. Whoever played now chose a slow, almost haunting tune. Wyman took the lead, and Emily allowed herself to be swayed along to the tune. At points, it reminded her of whalesong.

She kept thinking that she would see Alexi again out of the corner of her eye, but she never appeared. Even here, with Wyman trying to charm her or confuse her or whatever it is they were doing, she kept thinking back to her night with Alexi, and how they promised to spend this Fugue with each other. Of course, Corvo had other plans, keeping Alexi and some of the other senior guards at their posts for the entirety of the festival. Alexi had insisted that Emily take advantage of it and join the festivities at the Tower. Emily doubted that she had intended this. 

“Your thoughts are somewhere else, Empress.” Wyman seemed unable to let a single observation go unspoken. “Or with someone else. You must pardon me if I’m intruding.”

“No, forgive me. Perhaps I’ve had one too many drinks.”

“But you haven’t been drinking, Empress.”

“You’re making me wish that I had been.”

She finally got a laugh out of Wyman for that. “Was that an insult? Why, if anyone was to hear that I was so insulted by the Empress, there would be a regular scandal.”

‘There would be a regular scandal if you danced with me like this on any other night,” Emily retorted. “Courtiers are fond of scandals.”

“Can’t say that I’m any different. I wouldn’t mind causing a scandal with you.” For a moment, they let Emily step back in the dance before pulling her forward, practically closer than before. Emily almost had to lean back to meet their gaze. She watched her own hand come to rest squarely against Wyman’s chest. 

“My parents sent me from Morely months ago,” Wyman’s voice was soft, hardly audible against the music. Emily had to lean closer to hear them. “Something about me going to court and bumping elbows with the Empress. I’ve been trying to get to you since then.” Wyman let go of Emily’s hand and moved to brush her fingers along Emily’s jaw. “Corvo is protective of you, for obvious reasons, but so is Commander Mayhew. I can’t help but feel as if I’m-“

“What if you were? Would that stop you?” It was as if Emily could only hear herself speaking, not control what words she said. “However they celebrate the Fugue in Morely, here we spend it to have a matter of days without consequences. If you truly understood that, we wouldn’t be standing here talking, would we?”

There was something addictive about letting go and forgetting that, despite the unspoken rules of the Fugue, there would be consequences come morning. Emily couldn’t stop herself from saying yes, without all the years of complicated feelings she would have had to work through to so much as think of Alexi. It was self-destructive and possibly vile, especially when she thought that Alexi could have been waiting just around the corner.

That didn’t stop either of them. Emily wondered if this was what it was like for her mother and Corvo when they started their affair; so painfully aware that it was wrong, but caught up in it all the same.


	5. V. The Rat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How many has that sword killed?_ she thought as her hand came up to parry. Her riposte echoed, _How many will my sword kill?_

“Again. You need to focus this time, Emily.”

It seemed that as soon as she had hit the ground, she was hearing Corvo’s voice again, without a moment’s rest. Her bones ached with the memory of her last tryst with Wyman, a night of leaping from rooftops and drinking Tyvian wine and -

The tip of Corvo’s boot jammed into her side, not hard enough to knock the wind from her, but hard enough to get her up. She picked up the discarded sword, and before she could fully get into position, her father was inches from her again, swinging his sword in a strong attack. _How many has that sword killed?_ she thought as her hand came up to parry. Her riposte echoed, _How many will my sword kill?_

Corvo deflected her blow easily, spinning to come at her from the side and above. Her next parry was weak, and the sword came down to hit her hard with the flat part of the blade.

“You aren’t listening. Look at me.”

“I’m _looking._ ” Despite the smarting pain in her shoulder, she swung her sword with two hands. Clumsily executed, the move was countered with a one-handed parry. Her next two blows were handled the same way.

“If you’re going to be mindlessly aggressive, I’m just going to wait until you finish.” Corvo’s voice was condescending, more impatient than she had ever heard him. “You’ll never get anywhere fighting like this.”

Emily hit one final blow, and although the clash of their swords sang out, she made no headway. Breathing heavy, she let the sword fall to the ground again with a clatter.

Corvo started to speak, but she stepped forward and spoke over him. “You think that I believe you used perfect swordsmanship in Coldridge? That you burned through half of Dunwall with the four basic moves and a level head? Why don’t you teach me something that means anything?”

He dropped his sword hand to his side, pinching at the bride of his nose with the other. “You’re acting like a child. We’ve chosen the wrong time to do training, I -“

“Answer me! You can’t expect me to forget about all the things you’ve done and pretend they never happened.” There were tears in Emily’s eyes, and she fought hard to keep them from spilling over. “I don’t know anything about you. For all I know, you could be the Crown Killer.”

That softened Corvo’s expression significantly. “Emily, you’re just upset. You don’t mean that.”

“I mean what I said,” Emily answered, her voice dangerously quiet. “You’re a stranger to me.”

“I’m your-“

“Just telling me that you’re my father doesn’t excuse anything. I don’t know who you are or what you’ve done to get me here. My claim to the throne is based on you, but I don’t know you.” Emily shook her head, stepping back. He didn’t look upset anymore. There was only anger written in his face.

“I’ve tried to put all that behind me since the day I knew you were safe.”

“Then where do you go at night? Or during the Fugue?” That morning, she had placed the rune - her rune - inside of her pocket. to her, the sound sounded as if it was screaming. “You still have every rune and bone charm, and you keep them where anyone could find them and claim you as a heretic; that awful mask is always polished and perfect. And you’re not afraid of being discovered because you would want to go back to the way things were. Those were the best days of your life.”

He didn’t speak, as silent as he had been for so many years. For just a moment, she saw him as he was, unclouded by her childhood dreams and misconceptions. The years had not been kind to him, and it showed through his face and those rheumy, exhausted eyes. The man who stood before her had lost everything, and to get it back, he turned his heart to stone. 

He taught her how to fight, but he never taught her how to be compassionate or how to rule or how to navigate the intricacies of court. At first, she was sure it was because he didn’t care enough to, but then, she knew it was because it hurt too much to. Corvo was lost to her, lost in grief and pain. Her Corvo was gone; in fact, he had never been here, not since the day at the gazebo.

“Tell me,” Corvo said suddenly. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done it all twice over, if you could have. Tell me you wouldn’t have killed them, either. If you’re so above me, tell me that. Tell me you would have spared Daud.”

But she couldn’t, so she fell silent. 

Corvo looked away, not gaining any satisfaction from the fact that he was right. She would have done it, would have been even bloodier than Corvo had. She would have spared the world from seeing another day of the Pendleton’s lives, mines or no mines. She would have thrown away the heretic’s brand and throttled the Overseer herself. And she would have torn the Lord Regent apart, piece by piece. Her river of blood would have flown deeper and faster and darker through the streets of Dunwall, because there was so much anger deep inside her. Even where Corvo had mercy, she knew she could not.

She was crying now, silently, but Corvo could do nothing to comfort her. She didn’t want anything to do with him, not now. Her hand traced against the outline of the rune, finding a familiar comfort in the humming buzz of its song. She knew Corvo saw it in the way that his jaw set tightly.

“Is that one of mine?”

Emily looked defiantly into his eyes and shook her head. “I’ve seen it. Every night since I was there myself, I’ve seen it. I walked there, with him.” Her hands were shaking. “It wasn’t just a dream.”

Corvo didn’t have anything to say to that. He picked up her discarded sword and returned it to the rack on the wall of the armory, busying his hands with the task for longer than he needed to. Eventually, he spoke up again.

“You have a part to play in all this, like it or not,” he said roughly, with a shake of his head. “Keep playing it well, and both of us can stay alive.”

She hardly heard his footsteps as he walked away, as if he was stalking off to find his next quarry. A part of her wished that he was.


	6. VI. The Leviathan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was an instability here, something violent and hardly contained.

Instead of the usual mix of Dunwall smoke and seawater, the sticky air of the summer night stank of blood. It filled Emily’s senses, metallic and dark, before she could even open her eyes. 

The room around her was dark, just barely allowing her to make out what once were the facets of her saferoom: a rotting wooden desk, a couch stained with years of abandon, rusted tea sets balanced on top of decomposing books. She stood from the bed, which was starkly clean in an ocean of rot.

The door bearing Sokolov’s lock was gone completely, allowing her to walk out into her offices. The stench was overwhelming, to the point where she gagged too deep of a breath. Here, things were set in a similar state of abandonment, with the windows yellowed and dirtied to the point that they blocked out the sun. Strange plants grew up out of nothing, reddish and almost glowing with a threat that kept Emily from getting too close. Every so often, she would step past something that looked like it could have been human once. 

The stairs down toward the throne room were blocked off, piled up with scraps of furniture and wood to form a barricade. The only way to go was back through the saferoom and out to the rooftops.

Again, there were no rooftops at all, and instead Emily found her bare feet against the dark obsidian of the Void. Clavering Boulevard and the Cat were long gone, replaced by an endless expanse with little discernible features. She took a step, hesitant, and for a moment felt as if her foot was going to fall through Void and into nothingness. Every moment was calculated to the point that her movement became disjointed and strange, like some strange animal walking the great wastes of Pandyssia. There was an instability here, something violent and hardly contained.

She hardly noticed where exactly she was until she was already there.

It was the throne room, standing on its own away from any of the other rooms in the Tower but rotted to the same state of disarray as the other rooms had been.. It didn’t take long to recognize whose image was on the banners hung above, even though they had been torn to tatters. The anniversary of her mother’s death was only weeks away. 

It was difficult to walk forward along the aisle, as if she was moving through water. Strange things floated past her vision, flashes of sound and light that seemed like memories. Something large and eight feet tall, slim and polished gold. Ramsey’s booming voice, echoing through the hall accompanied by the gasps of the courtiers. Nobles, guardsmen, and the other staff laid out carelessly, bloodied and battered. The shine of Alexi’s red hair.

Her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t tell why. It was so loud that it was ringing in her ears, a deafening roar even though nothing had yet revealed itself to cause anything like it. But when she looked down, in her hand she saw that the sound was that of a beating, throbbing heart in her left hand, grotesque and mechanical. Her hands were covered in gore, one with a bandage wrapped around it. Slowly, she pulled the cloth aside to see what it covered. She couldn’t process what the symbol meant before she looked back up to see the throne room in its current state, mundane as ever. But when she turned, she saw something hulking near the bottom of the throne, standing over a body that was impossible to identify after what had been done to it. Closer, it wasn’t difficult to make out the grotesque features of the thing’s face.

Emily woke up screaming, and no matter how many times Wyman insisted that none of it was real, she couldn’t stop sobbing.  
The rune beneath her pillow sang as calmly as ever.


	7. VII. The Rabbit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexi needed to be kept from all this, somehow.

Another ugly blotch of ink splattered across the decree that she had been attempting to write for the last ten minutes. “If you have something to ask, then by all means, ask it.” Emily crumpled it up and threw it with the others. Even menial work took up much of her patience these days, when heat and tensions both ran high. Unsolicited visitors only made it worse. “Please.” Convention was an afterthought.

She didn’t look up, but if she had, she would have seen Alexi standing at attention near the door, just as she always did when she needed anything. For once, the guardswoman shifted, concern touching her voice as she studied her Empress’ face.

“I wanted to take up a personal matter with you.”

Emily looked up, fully registering that it was Alexi for the first time. She kept scratching away at the paper, the handwriting that so many tutors had molded so carefully when she was a child now a careless scrawl. Anyone with information leading to the capture and arrest of the vigilante known falsely as the Crown Killer will receive…

“Emily. This is important.”

She finished off her line and set the paper aside. She studied Alexi for a long moment before she nodded and spoke. “Go ahead, then.”

Alexi fell painfully silent for a moment before she gathered enough courage to speak. “I… Emily, I’m worried for you.”

Emily almost laughed at that. “I’m not sure what you mean. Has something happened?”

Alexi stared dumbly, as it it was painfully obvious. “I’ve hardly talked to you in weeks. Emily, I hardly see you anymore.” There was something to her expression that made her look vulnerable, and almost afraid.

“I’ve been busy,” Emily answered as her only explanation. Busy avoiding her father, busy dealing with Wyman, busy pretending that things weren’t falling apart wherever she looked. “It happens, this time of year. “

The puzzled look on Alexi’s face was justified, since it was an absolute lie. “Emily, please, you don’t have to push me away. If you think I’m upset, I’m not.”

The words hurt more than Emily cared to admit, considering that they were absolutely genuine. Her advisors had insisted on naming Wyman as the Royal Consort, something about strengthening ties with Morely, and Emily hadn’t protested - and certainly, neither had Wyman. They seemed to take up every moment that she didn’t spend completing the royal duties that she was ordered to. And now, Alexi had been lost somewhere in the shuffle.

She still looked the same as she always had, with a sweet face and kind eyes, but she seemed older now, even older than she had back before Wyman. Emily only met her answer with silence, and soon enough Alexi had pulled up a chair and sat across the desk from her.

“You used to do this when we were children, too. I’d get too close, find out just too much, and you would pull away again.” Emily looked away, but she could still feel Alexi’s eyes. “You’re building your walls up again, and this time I don’t know why.”

Emily shook her head, and when she tried to stand up and walk away, Alexi took hold of her hands and kept her there. The contact was almost too much.

“You’re safe,” Alexi murmured, a promise that Emily would have believed if Alexi’s hands weren’t trembling in her own.

Emily again thought of Corvo, of the way her reflection now looked so much like the tiny portrait she kept of him before he came to Dunwall. She thought about the sword in his hand and the sword at her belt. Here, nothing could harm her, but what would she harm by the time the day was done? How many failed pieces of legislation, failed solutions, failed apologies? 

“No,” Emily answered. “I’m not.” For a moment, she squeezed tightly to Alexi’s hands, taking in her warmth and her light and everything that she cared so deeply about her. Alexi needed to be kept from all this, somehow. Whatever it was that was to come, Emily was sure that she wanted the people closest to her to have no part in it. 

She wanted them to have nothing to do with her.

Both of them didn’t have words to express. Emily let go for a moment to push back hair from Alexi’s face; at one point Alexi moved to rearrange the books stacked precariously at the desk. But they kept coming back to one another, to the familiar contact. They had known each other for so long that to just exist was enough.

“It’s late,” Emily noticed aloud, and she softly let go of her friend’s hands. “You should rest.”

“So should you.” The question that was not a question hung in the air for a long, uncomfortable moment. 

“Not tonight, Alexi.” Emily’s smile was sad, and she could see the same thing underneath the acceptance in Alexi’s eyes. “Not tonight.”

Alexi left her with a soft kiss on the forehead and the echoing click of the door closing behind her.


	8. VIII. The Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one lied so sweetly as Wyman.

“You can’t do this, Emily.”

It had been a very, very long time since anyone has directly told her that she could not do something. 

The Empress kept pacing back and forth along the length of her saferoom as if she meant to see how long it would take the floor to give out. She said nothing, but the strain in Wyman’s voice caused her to fidget at her signet ring. She couldn't decide if she wanted to laugh or cry, stuck between far too many tangled emotions.

“You can’t send me back, not now. I thought things were going well, I thought we were-“

“Wyman, please.” Emily’s voice silenced theirs immediately. The quiet that followed was punctuated only by the sound of the summer night outside, where the first whaling trawl of the season slid into the Wrenhaven. “This was never about our feelings.”

“Speak for yourself. You know why I stayed.”

“I don’t think you know yourself.” Emily pinched at the bridge of her nose. “Your family has been without you for months. I don’t understand why a visit home should seem like such a strange offer.”

Wyman was silent for long enough to turn Emily back around again. The expression on her consort’s face was a steely one, more serious than she had ever seen them.

“Alexi came to speak with me.”

Emily exhaled deeply. Everything made sense. “Wyman, please, don’t think that I’m doing this to get rid of you, or push you away, or whatever it is that she said. I just -“

“She said that I should trust you,” Wyman answered, their voice quiet enough to give Emily pause. “Above anything, she said that I should trust you.” Hesitant, they added, “And this is the first time that I’ve doubted Captain Mayhew.”

Emily gave a rough chuckle at that, and before she knew it Wyman had gathered her into their arms and wouldn’t let go. 

“We know you’re pushing us out, Alexi and I,” they murmured, soft in her ear. “It’s obvious that your mother’s passing is a difficult time for you. The thought that something horrible will happen again, or that things will go wrong on such an important anniversary… I know you think you’re protecting me.”

They were wrong about that. She was protecting them from what had waited for her in the throne room. But she held on tighter to Wyman’s waist and cried for the second time that day, and she let Wyman lie to her. No one lied so sweetly as Wyman.

“There you are,” they said eventually when Emily pulled back, wiping the tears off of her cheeks. “I’ll do whatever makes you happy. If that means going to Morely -“

“Yes,” Emily answered, all too quickly. “Please.”

Wyman nodded, no longer wanting an explanation. “Fine. But Alexi stays. Let her take care of you, if I can’t.”

Emily cracked a small smile again. “You really call this taking care of me? Coming into my office, arguing, and hugging me when I cry?”

“Maybe I do,” Wyman answered, before returning to the embrace and tucking their chin against Emily’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s why you love me.”

With a small sound of agreement, Emily shut her eyes. She knew it wasn’t; she loved Wyman for a thousand reasons, and she hated them for a different thousand. But she could have stayed like this for a long time, forgetting about all of them. At least there was someone, she thought. At least it was someone who cared enough to trust her.

“I’ll leave tomorrow, early morning,” they said eventually, the sound of the announcement dull against the happy silence of the room. “The joy of being a royal consort is that I can have things done that quickly.”

“Is that the only joy?” Emily jested, again pulling back from the hug. 

“Not quite,” Wyman answered with the usual quirked smile and a peck at her cheek. “I’ll retire early tonight.”

She had never spent a night feeling so alone.


	9. IX. The Swan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was lost in the rage that bubbled up from somewhere inside of her, not so deeply buried as she had once thought.

She killed the guardsman without hesitation, the satisfying, wet sound of blade separating skin and muscle deafening in the silence. The exposed skin of his neck gave way so easily that she was almost shocked when he fell to the ground, dead without a sound. His body still writhed horribly for a few moments, and Emily shuddered despite herself.

He had heard the sob that ripped past her lips at the sight of Alexi, had heard every step of her mourning as he tried to approach her. When she managed to dip out of sight, he kicked Alexi’s body out of the way as if it was nothing. Emily didn’t bother to try to choke him until he passed out.

Silently, she began her descent to the throne room. Ramsey was waiting for her somewhere, ready for a fate that involved wither the end of her blade or a slow, solitary death. It almost seemed too merciful, to end his life here, but there was something that told her that there would be no greater retribution than that of ending him abruptly, on her terms. 

She wanted blood.

When she found him, he was admiring the throne, the same one that he had conspired against quietly for months. She was lost in the rage that bubbled up from somewhere inside of her, not so deeply buried as she had once thought. All stealth was completely forgotten.

She knocked him to the ground, pinned him with her knees, and swung the rough-hewn guardsman sword again, and again, and again. Somehow, she kept quiet, terrified of the arrival of the Clockwork Soldiers or the Duke’s men, but inside her twenty-five years of rage screamed out with some final relief. Sometimes, it seemed as if he could have been the Regent, or the Overseer, or Daud himself. The first step to bringing back her honor was retribution.

When she was finished, there was nothing left for her to do than to wipe the blood from her face and carry on, out into the great world where she would be friendless and alone. 

She looked up to where her stately portrait hung, the eyes of the young empress meeting hers. The girl in the portrait had a sweet face, easy and welcoming. The similarity to the nearby banners bearing Jessamine’s face was uncanny, every feature of Emily’s blatantly exaggerated to match her mother’s. Her hands sat crossed neatly in her lap, free of imperfections that would disrupt the perfect conformity of the deep purple pantsuit she wore. Every part of her was perfect, down to the last hair. It was a shining image that gleamed down onto the room.

Emily looked at herself in the reflection off what once had been her throne. That same coat was torn practically to ribbons, stained with the colors of dying men. Dark hair hung around her face in strands, the rest only barely tucked up into a neat twist meant to mimic her mother’s. Her hands, now so used to holding the sword that they twitched whenever she used them for any other tasks, were calloused and worn. Gaunt features stared back at her, always too tired and too severe and too wild to be the face of an empress. When she looked back to see the obsidian statue of her father, she knew exactly who that face belonged to. Both belonged to each other, but also to the figure of her dreams: the angled face and bright eyes of a simple person, perched atop the body of a hulking animal.

The image above her was a mockery, a polished image of what she was supposed to be. But with Ramsay’s body at her feet and her father frozen beside her, the gilding was chipping off, revealing the rough-hewn pewter underneath. The portrait was a lie, a person that she never was.

It was not her portrait anymore, and it never would be again.


End file.
